


...Is Its Own Reward

by mouse42



Category: Gargoyles (TV), Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-09 12:11:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1982526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouse42/pseuds/mouse42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David Xanatos and Owen Burnett travel to Egypt to retrieve a new artifact for his collection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	...Is Its Own Reward

The armored car rolled to a stop underneath the shade of palm tree. Owen stepped out first, doing a quick sweep of the area, not expecting any trouble and not finding it either. The squat little building in an unremarkable section of Cairo not far from the university drew little attention to itself. Seeing only a few students walking by, Owen held open the back door for Mr. Xanatos. 

“Thank you, Owen,” he said, straightening his sport coat as he looked around. “Quaint little place, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.” 

Owen followed his employer as he walked briskly for the building’s entrance. A man came out as they approached, clearly excited. So excited, Owen had a feeling he’d been peeking out the window, waiting for their arrival for who knew how long. He was classically good looking, a little scruffy, but dressed for the weather. His tanned skin, sun-bleached hair, and the streak of dirt on his cheek gave the impression of a hardworking man who wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. He grinned, so darn earnest it almost hurt to look at him. Owen liked him immediately. 

“Mr. Xanatos,” the man said, catching the other man’s hand in a solid, enthusiastic handshake that went on for just a touch too long. “We are so happy to have you here, I can’t even begin…”

“Thank you, thank you,” Mr. Xanatos said graciously, wisely cutting him off. They’d probably be standing out in the sun all day, otherwise. “I’m glad my schedule allowed me to stop by. Shall we go inside?”

“Of course!” The man waved Mr. Xanatos ahead, then reached out to shake Owen’s hand as well as they walked. “Dr. Carter Hall.”

“Owen Burnett. We spoke on the phone.” A blast of air conditioning hit him as he stepped through the door. Owen loved air conditioning, he really did. It was one of his favorite modern inventions, next to waste management.

“Good to finally meet you in person. Oh, sorry about that!” Dr. Hall rushed ahead of them, pushing a pallet of construction supplies away with his foot. The entire interior appeared to be undergoing some serious renovations. “As you can see, we’re putting your very generous grant to good work. “

Mr. Xanatos nodded. “Happy to see it.”

Dr. Hall beamed.

Owen only half listened as Dr. Hall started in on the grand tour, taking them through open rooms with long tables and lots of shelves where artifacts dug from the sand around the city were slowly, gently cleaned by young students with tiny brushes. Most of it looked like broken bits of cheap plates and pots and Owen allowed himself a tiny smile. Archaeology amused and horrified him, always a little creeped out that a pot he pissed in once might end up on display in some high end gallery. None of it even seemed particularly old to him, but he supposed it was a matter of perspective. 

Seeing Owen standing alone, Dr. Hall came over while Mr. Xanatos to spoke to a student brushing the dust off a cracked funerary cone. “Is this your first visit to Egypt?” he asked. 

Owen thought back to honeyed figs sticking to his fingers, drinking warm beer on a cool night, digging his toes into the sand and watching groups of workers slowly build the most astonishing thing he’d ever seen humans accomplish up to that point - only to build another one right next to it, even greater than the last. He remembered long days and long nights, laughing with Seth, then laughing _at_ him when the family drama got too crazy to believe, giving up and heading north and west.

“No,” he said, “but it has been many years.”

“Thank you for the tour, Dr. Hall,” Mr. Xanatos said, walking up to the two of them, all business as usual. “I’d like to see the artifact you’d mentioned last week, if at all possible.”

“Absolutely,” Dr. Hall said, leading them out of the main room into a dark corridor not yet touched by the construction. “It’s a very strange artifact indeed. Honestly, none of us know what to make of it. Half the discipline thinks it might be a modern forgery, but of course the problem with that is we retrieved it from a sealed chamber from the 19th Dynasty. If it is a forgery, I’d like to know how somebody got it into a room locked tight for over 3000 years.”

“That’d be quite a trick,” Mr. Xanatos said. “Tell me, why the debate?”

“For one thing, it doesn’t fit with any of the artifacts we’ve found from that era, nor any before it. The shape and style is more Middle Ages than ancient Egypt, not that I’m an expert on the Middle Ages, mind you. Point is, it’s far too modern, a true anachronism.” He pushed open a plain metal door, allowing Mr. Xanatos to walk in first, following closely behind. The room was dimly lit, just a few bare bulbs in the ceiling. “Then there’s the matter of the metal it’s made from - or more that we can’t identify the metal it’s made from. We’ve ran tests, but our equipment is giving us strange results.”

Owen stepped in the room, his eyes immediately going to the main object on display, and barely stopped himself from staggering back out the door. The oversized kettle in the middle of the room exuded a sense of alien wrongness that bordered on the obscene. It filled him with a horror that twisted his insides up unlike anything he’d ever experienced. He must have made some kind of noise, Owen couldn’t quite tell over the rushing in his ears, but both men turned back to look at him.

“Mr. Burnett, are you all right?” Dr. Hall said, stepping toward him.

Forcing himself to stand up straight, Owen locked his knees to keep from running out. “My apologies. A moment of dizziness. I’m afraid I’m experiencing some jet lag. You were saying?”

“Oh, yes,” Dr. Hall said, looking him up and down one more time, but he must have been satisfied with Owen’s charade because he continued where he’d left off. “The translation is tricky. There are some decorative markings around the lip that we originally thought might be writing, but they don’t correspond to any known language. From what few carvings and writings we were able to find, we know it’s referred to as, ‘The Cauldron of Life’ or possibly ‘The Life Containing Cauldron’ and that, ‘whoever bathes in it will live as long as the mountain stones’. Of course, we don’t have any mountains around here, which makes it even more mysterious.”

Mr. Xanatos and Dr. Hall continued talking, but the conversation seemed to fade into the background amid the buzzing of his own head. Looking at the cauldron was like staring into the abyss. The room seemed to get larger and larger, the walls pushed back by the force of the cauldron, too small to truly contain it. A quick blink brought the room back to its true state, but the illusion kept creeping back. It made Owen feel nauseous, a feeling he didn’t think he’d experienced for at least a century or more, not since the bad fish incident. This felt like a million bad fish and a quail. 

“Give us a moment, Dr. Hall, if you don’t mind?” Mr. Xanatos said, gesturing politely, but firmly at the door. “I’d like to take a closer look at the artifact and I think Mr. Burnett could use a drink to clear his head.”

“You bet,” Dr. Hall said, cheerfully clapping Owen on the shoulder as he passed.

When the door closed, Owen let himself take a few steps back and collapse against it, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. 

“Jet lag?” Mr. Xanatos asked. 

“No, sir. The cauldron, it’s…” Owen opened his eyes, taking in Mr. Xanatos’s skeptical expression. He shook his head, looking at the cauldron out of the corner of his eye, glad for his purposely weakened vision that made it blurry. “It’s _revolting_.”

Mr. Xanatos hummed, walking around the cauldron, hands in his pockets. “True. It certainly wouldn’t mesh with the décor in the den. More importantly, Owen, is it magic?”

“It’s not fey magic, nor that of human form,” he said, making himself stand up again, putting his glasses back on, staring the cauldron down. It was terrible, a true abomination against nature, but he wasn’t about to let it beat him. “It’s definitely something, sir.”

“Definitely something is good enough for me,” Mr. Xanatos said. Owen did not miss the brief nod of approval he gave him for pulling himself together. “Make the necessary arrangements with Dr. Hall, if you please?”

“Yes, sir.” It was no simple thing, getting an artifact out of Egypt. The government was sensitive about that, for good reason. But, a significantly large donation by a very wealthy man known to be very interested in history certainly went a long way to smoothing things out.

Dr. Hall came back in as Mr. Xanatos was leaving, carrying a can of soda. “So, you’ll be taking the Cauldron of Life, then?”

“With permission, yes,” Owen said, taking a sip of the soda, even though he didn’t especially care for it. “We have researchers of our own that would like to look into its authenticity. Of course, any information we discover will be relayed to your department.”

“I certainly hope you can give me an answer to the puzzle. Did you want to take the statues, as well?”

“Statues?” Owen repeated, realizing he’d missed something from earlier. 

Dr. Hall led him across the room. “The detail is amazing, isn’t it? Unlike any statuary from that time period, although the style of dress worn by the figures is definitely historically accurate for the 19th Dynasty. They were found sealed in with the cauldron.”

There were two statues, both young children, curled into themselves, hands bound and crossed over their chests, foreheads pressed against their knees. Kneeling down, Owen looked at the one on the left, taking a penlight out of his pocket. The child’s face was contorted, eyes squeezed closed, expression clearly one of terror and despair, teeth gnashing, lip curled, obviously in terrible pain. The one on the right was no better, both awful to behold. 

Owen stood up. “No, Dr. Hall. I think we’ll leave those here for now.”


End file.
